Offences Affecting the Administration of Justice

In one line

When a crime is committed against a court, the court cannot both be the victim and the judge; this chapter says how the case gets to a different court, and the four narrow situations where the court may act on the spot.

In exam wording: Chapter XXVIII of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, sections 379 to 391, prescribes the procedure for offences affecting the administration of justice, providing for a complaint by the aggrieved Court, an appeal against the making or refusal of a complaint, and the limited powers of summary punishment.

Why the law has this at all

A witness lies on oath. A man forges a document and files it. Somebody shouts down the proceedings. A summoned witness simply does not come.

Every one of these is an offence, and every one of them injures the court in which it happens. That creates the difficulty the chapter exists to solve. If the court that was lied to could also try the perjury, it would be judging a wrong done to itself, on evidence it formed a view about while deciding something else. The appearance of the thing would be bad and the reality might be worse.

So the Sanhita separates the two roles. The court that was wronged makes a complaint; a different court tries it. Section 391 states that as a prohibition, and it is the section to open an answer with.

But an absolute separation would be unworkable. A man interrupting a hearing cannot be dealt with by a complaint filed next month; the trial is happening now. So four exceptions let the court act itself, and the Sanhita keeps them small by keeping the punishments small: three months, one thousand rupees, seven days, five hundred rupees.

Some words this chapter uses

Section 215 is the section that bars cognizance of these offences except on a complaint; clause (b) of section 215(1) is the class this chapter is about, offences committed in or in relation to a proceeding in a Court, or in respect of a document produced or given in evidence in one.

In the view or presence of the Court in section 384 means the offence happened where the Court could see it.

Before the rising of the Court means before the Court rises for the day.

Section 379: the complaint

Sub-section (1), the power. When, on an application or otherwise, any Court is of opinion that it is expedient in the interests of justice that an inquiry should be made into an offence referred to in section 215(1)(b) which appears to have been committed in or in relation to a proceeding in that Court, or in respect of a document produced or given in evidence in such a proceeding, that Court may, after such preliminary inquiry, if any, as it thinks necessary: